ABSTRACT
Kia criticizes Muli for being incompetent, lazy, and selfish, and for spending money on himself while she works and supports the family by cutting grass for cattle. When she insults him by asking what kind of man would allow his wife to support him, Muli strikes her hard. She becomes sullen and sits in a corner all night. When Muli awakens in the morning, he finds that his wife has left without taking her grass-cutting knife or other work implements. Muli fears that she might try to commit suicide. In the after noon, two men report that she threw herself under a train. Muli cries out; then sits numb with grief. In the evening he hears that his wife is alive and unhurt: some men pulled her off the tracks and took her to her sister-in-law’s house. Eventually she returns to Muli, but the reconciliation is slow.
Unlike his affair with Tafulla, Muli takes the blame for causing Kia’s attempted suicide, and he conveys a genuine, overwhelming grief when he believes that she has died. He also wryly describes the wailing of his mother for the daughter-in-law whom she had thrown out of her house, “Where did you go, my lovely daughter-in-law, what happened to you, how were you cut?”
In another incident included in this chapter, a wealthy Oilpresser uses his power to threaten the Bauris when they accuse him of having impregnated a Bauri widow. Here Muli highlights the double standard of Bauri men, who intimidate the widow and meekly submit to the Oilpresser.
